


Take Two

by orphan_account



Series: Take Two [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: - Levi probably, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Drabble That Got Out of Control, Fate why are you so goddamn random, Fate you did it again, Fate's Questionable Decisions, Fate™, M/M, POV Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin), Soulmates Verse, come on Fate you can do better than this, seriously Fate enough with all the fucking bullshit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-26
Updated: 2016-04-26
Packaged: 2018-06-04 17:33:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6667951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every person has a timer on their wrist which counts down to the moment one meets their soulmate.</p><p>[Basically a story of how Levi met his soumate.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take Two

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a post from Tumblr. I can't find it right now (because I'm an idiot and reblogged it but didn't tag it with anything), but when I do, I'll link to the original post.
> 
> I just had to get this idea out of my system (and its word doc gone from my plotbunnies folder). I hope you enjoy!

**_2015, November 21 st _ **

**_Los Angeles, California_ **

Levi would be plain lying if he said he was unenthusiastic about meeting his soulmate because he’d grown up to stories of many different people finding theirs.

Throughout his high school life, he had seen a fair number of clocks ticking down to zero every first day of school. There were also a number of times when two people just randomly bumped into each other, ready to snap at one another for bumping into them, but suddenly had their eyes filled with tears that he had witnessed in everyday places like coffee shops, supermarkets, parks and many others.

Growing up, he had two childhood friends who knew each other practically since they still wore diapers and whose timers have always been at zero. The realization came to them the night of their high school graduation; a dinner was organized by the three’s parents to celebrate and somehow the topic had veered off into the direction of soulmates. Both of them thought that maybe because their timers were at zero, they didn’t have a soulmate or maybe their soulmate died before they were even born and to be honest, they had never talked about that before. Levi could only smile and congratulate them from the sidelines as realization settled in. Now, he would fondly look back at that memory because the two were now married and had a son. Their names were Farlan and Isabel.

The raven had been staring at the timer on his wrist all day. Ever so  _fortunately_  for him, the day when he was supposed to meet the one true gift from the universe that just so happened to have quite the reputation for fucking up a lot of Levi’s significant plans for his life since counting a few years back decided that this time, he was going to have the pleasure of meeting his soulmate the same day of the inauguration of the main office of Shiganshina Life relocated in LA.

His eyes were continuously darting back and forth, taking a second longer examining almost every unfamiliar person he encountered. He wanted to curse himself for bumping into what he counted was the fourth person today: a man from airport security right after he landed in LAX because, again, he was too preoccupied staring in every other direction his eyes could reach except the general direction of where his feet were heading.

 _Calm the fuck down and breathe, you idiot,_ he scolded himself internally as he got into the black car assigned to escort him to the sight of the new branch. He noticed out of the corner of his eye that his secretary, Petra, was looking at him worriedly again; she was fully aware of the situation and to Levi’s gratitude, she did nothing but prod, nudge or snap – whatever a certain situation or circumstance required – him back into reality and keep him focused.

“We’re about to arrive, sir. You might want to get ready,” she said, once again successfully pulling him out of his whirlwind of mushed up, exaggerated and paranoid thoughts that mixed but stuck out individually every millisecond. The only problem was, this time, he had barely heard her because both his thoughts and the beating of his heart were growing louder and louder. It was a little over an hour before he would meet the person he was supposed to spend the rest of his life with.

An hour, Levi was out of the car, Petra trailing slightly behind him. He sure took his sweet time entering the building and trying not to trip on anything and everything. Christ; and he thought his capacity for maintaining his composure in times like this was better than what his mother believed. He would probably hand her twenty bucks once this was all over and done with.

Five minutes later, he was tapping his fingers idly to a nonexistent tune on his thigh, scanning the room he was in with watchful eyes. He knows that everyone that was going to fill this room a short while later were people he has seen before, more than half of them happily married. The president, Mr. Yeager, is happily married, Erwin is engaged, and Petra has her soulmate as a boyfriend.

Levi sighed heavily.

All the important people were certainly not the person he was waiting for, but who? He wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be a secretary or personal assistant of one of the people attending; maybe a receptionist that Levi hadn’t seen because they weren’t at the desk when he entered, an agent, a random client, a driver. An electrician because something would suddenly go wrong and all the lights would get snuffed out and an electrician would be called? An exterminator because somehow the pristine, newly-built building was crawling with rodents?

Oh God, in all the thirty-two years of his life, he had never been this terrified, panicked, jumpy and at the same time sleepy. He was so touch-and-go right now and he _hated_ it. His fingers couldn’t keep still and were still tapping; his eyes wanted to just droop shut because he had had absolutely no sleep the previous night, spending all that time tossing and turning while overthinking on the most ridiculous of things; his heart was pounding loud and clear in his chest that he constantly worried its beating was audible to others’ ears as well.

Another ten minutes passed, with forty-five minutes on his wrist’s clock. Petra was now seated beside him, fiddling with her phone in a very concentrated manner. She was probably finalizing the uncertain parts of his schedule for the rest of the week, he guessed, because her eyebrows would constantly furrow or she would pause as if thinking something over and putting it into consideration.

Thirty minutes left on Levi’s timer, the room was mostly filled with nothing but familiar faces and the occasional unfamiliar face that had brought their spouse along. The president had yet to arrive. He sees Erwin and his fiancée, Hanji, approach him.

“Levi! Been a while, hasn’t it? Are there any new, exciting developments in your life since last time?” The brunette woman says as she chooses to sit in the empty chair beside him. ‘Last time’ would be two months ago in Chicago. Both she and Erwin were two of Levi’s closest friends out of everyone in Shiganshina so it was now perfectly normal for the eccentric woman to pry into his life and squeeze all the details she could out of him every time they saw each other. But of course, most of the time she wouldn’t get anywhere and each time she would fail to find out about anything, Erwin would just chuckle softly beside her. As if he knew any more. Alas, that would elicit the same expression out of her each time: pouty and demanding to be let in on what more the blonde man doesn’t actually know.

Exchanges like that between them never ceased to amuse Levi.

“From what I remember, nothing until the next–” he looks at his wrist absentmindedly as if his heart wasn’t hammering in his chest right at that moment, “Twenty-eight minutes or so.”

Hanji squealed loud enough for people sitting nearby to swivel their heads around. This caused Levi’s eyebrows to furrow and the raven to bare his teeth as he hissed, “dumbass.”

“Aww Levi, don’t be so mean. It’s not like I ruined your reputation or anything like that,” she cooed.  _Actually, I’d be surprised that my reputation and pride wasn’t already completely trampled on after all the times I was seen together with your loud megaphone of a fucking mouth._

By the way Hanji’s smile grew at his silence Levi guessed the eccentric woman guessed what he was thinking. Eccentric; ha, you can surely say that again.

“Anyway short stack, we’ll be leaving you to wondering who your future spouse will be for now,” she paused and winked which made Levi roll his eyes. “Just don’t forget to invite us to the wedding, ‘kay?” Levi nodded, just the smallest bob of his head but that was apparently enough to put a twinkle to Hanji’s eyes that the raven could only describe as obnoxious, and then he waved them off.

Levi noticed that Erwin hadn’t talked even once since his fiancée had most likely dragged him over to where he was sitting. He wasn’t really surprised, though, since his friend was one of those people who usually didn’t participate very much in conversation unless talked to directly or asked a question, and he was even more rarely the type to butt in with a comment to what a person said. However, if the right topic is brought up, he’s able to talk non-stop for hours that involved long, food for thought discussions. To be honest, Levi would be less reluctant to share about his whole soulmate ordeal to Erwin rather than to Hanji because, at least, Erwin wouldn’t tease him as much about it as Hanji would. Now, she was famous for being an expert at shattering Levi’s pride.

Twenty minutes left, the raven was pretty sure he was sweating but was cut off from looking for the handkerchief he was sure he had brought by Petra handing him out a handkerchief, seemingly well prepared for this situation.

“Are you all right? You’re currently pale on the level of a vampire.”

“I’m fine.”  _No, my chest is going to fucking explode any second now._

He accepted the handkerchief and tried to compose himself for what must be the umpteenth time today. He knew his appearance alone was a dead giveaway to his obvious lie and that his heart was so,  _so_ close to completely busting a hole through his ribcage and jumping off one of the windows with how hard it was beating, yet, and thankfully so, Petra only narrowed her eyes at him before taking out her phone again and pouring all her focus on the five-inch screen.

Fifteen minutes, the room is packed and a woman steps up front with a microphone and starts a speech about the new main office and how blessed the company has been but Levi is barely able to register what she was saying. He remembers her to be Nanaba and she was one of the people who have been with the company for the longest time; a familiar face, definitely, and happily married with three children.

Thirteen minutes, the speech drags on. Levi  _knows_ his expression isn’t like his usual indifferent and mostly blank one.

Eleven minutes, the CEO of Shiganshina Life, Grisha Yeager, is called to speak and that drags even more. Multiple occasions, his gaze sweeps over to Levi’s general direction and he pretends as if he was engrossed in what the man was saying. He was the head of the statistics department, after all, so the least he could do was this. He’s barely able to do so anyway.

Ten minutes. The suspense is slowly and very painfully killing him. To be specific, a two-edged sword is being twisted and pushed deeper into his chest and invisible crimson liquid stains his actually immaculately clean suit. One of the security guards suddenly interrupting the meeting to tell them that a psychopathic serial killer had somehow entered the building and was on their way to kill all of them?

Nine minutes. The serial killer? God, he hoped not.

Eight minutes.

Seven minutes.

Six minutes.

Five minutes. Each excruciating tick that only Levi could feel, as if blended into the pattern of his pulse and heartbeat, was designed so that every second as zero drew closer would be stronger, louder and more clearly felt like the message was flowing through his nerves consistently and perfectly in sync with every part of his body. The message that he would be meeting his soulmate very soon was flowing through his bloodstreams, screaming at him by making him feel like veins popped in his body as every second passed.

Four minutes. Every time the numbers that represent seconds and minutes on his wrists change, the raven feels like his wrists are being slashed with a force that nobody could exactly laugh at.

Three minutes. Tick. _Slash._ Tick. _Slash._ Tick. _Slash._

Two minutes.

One minute, the president wraps up his speech and calls Levi’s name. He instructs him to join him and give a short statement of his own.

Fifty seconds, Levi was standing up and striding over to where the president was.

Forty seconds, he walked the distance of twenty feet in record time.

Thirty seconds, the president hands him the mic which he accepts with a smile. He hopes that his nervousness isn’t so blatantly obvious like it actually is.

Twenty-five seconds, Levi is able to accept that wishful thinking is completely and utterly useless. He internally stumbles along the gears in his mind that are currently on overdrive, running way too fast for what was considered healthy as he tries to think up something to say.

Twenty seconds, after staring hopelessly at the crowd before him, he starts with a standard introduction of himself, slapping himself in the face internally half a second later at how dumb what he just did was when he remembered that the president already said who he was.

Seventeen seconds, he forces himself into saying a subpar block of four sentences stating how he was thankful of the new main office’s completion, the company’s success, the hard work of all the people and their efforts that got the company to where it was now. His words sounded like they had been gobbled up. Obviously, all of it was scripted.

Eight seconds were left on the timer as he wrapped up his little speech.

Three seconds, he had said about one-third of that last sentence.

One second, he paused. Levi’s eyes traveled the room for a split second and then…

At that exact moment that the clock hit zero, Levi was about to open his mouth to speak again but his wrist hurt like hell and hell was as if it had been chopped off. He wasn’t able to hide a hiss of pain as the large doors at the back of the room suddenly barged open and in came a person the raven wouldn’t be able to guess in a million years. Standing there sweaty and with his hair in a wild mess was the son of the CEO and president of the board of Shiganshina Life, Eren Yeager.

Things seemed to happen faster after that one second that honestly felt like a millennium.

Levi turned his gaze back and forth between his right wrist – he was examining it and scrutinizing it in every way possible, checking to make sure that the timer was, indeed, at zero, and it had, indeed, reached zero the moment the president’s son entered the room – and the late comer who had made a dramatic entrance. The pain that used to radiate from said wrist seems to have instantly disappeared when stormy grey slits met cerulean green glass-like orbs. All the while, the young man at the opposite end of the room had the same, exact look on his face as Levi did: shock, which was evident enough, but his eyes and his expression as a whole also plainly screamed…

“Why him?!” Yup, that was definitely Levi’s thoughts voiced out loud. Only, it came from the lips of the younger, more startled man instead of himself. All eyes in the entire room were surely on the two of them now and it was dead silent.

“There’s at least a five-year age difference!” Oh, fuck. He screwed up and he screwed up bad. The raven had said that out loud and –  _goddammit, scratch that –_ a series of simultaneous whispering and hushed conversations erupted and took over the whole room, rendering the previously almost eerie silence disregarded and very quickly forgotten.

Levi’s eyes were locked with the brunette’s for one whole minute and the moment he was finally able to tear his gaze away from him, he almost, _almost_ regretted it. His eyes found the president’s, and while he looked like he had a lot to tell him that very moment, his eyes were… Oh no…

The man was smiling in what seemed like a polite way – but undoubtedly had something held back lurking at the crooks and corners of his mouth – but the glint that lit up his eyes could only be described by a single word: murderous.

_Thanks again, fate. You have officially restored my absolute, utter faith and devotion in you._


End file.
